Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Yay for setting the scene! And, this is actually based upon a real place.

One day when my sister and I were out hiking through the woods toward my college’s sculpture building, we stumbled across this graveyard, which was even more dilapidated than the one pictured here. We didn’t know it then, but as it turns out, the cemetery separated the scientific trails from the art trails, and as we continued our hike, we found many strange artistic installations, some of which were somewhat unsettling. One of these creepy installations was a row of trees, which had been splashed with red paint and wrapped in gauze in places. It was just as I passed these that one of the loud machines in the sculpture yard was turned on, which gave a mighty roar and scared the snot out of both of us. Later on down the trails, there was a large steel cage suspended above a creek, which had been torn and bent as though something had broken out of it.

As I continued with College, the cemetery and woods became a place for me to unwind, and I spent many hours eating lunch in the graveyard, or amongst the banks of the creek that wound through the woods. I even put a few of my own installations there, ranging from small stone cairns, to tree decorations, to werewolf prints. I’ve had a fondness for old graveyards ever since, and every year around Halloween, I place a mini-pumpkin in the graveyard.

And, on that somewhat morbid note, I hope everyone had a great holiday, and has a great new year!

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

So, which would you rather encounter? A whomping willow or a pissed off ent?

Also, um, sorry, I know this definitely is not my best art here… And also, a possible apology in advance here, but as is common this time of year, no guarantees about an update next week, what, with the holidays and all.I promise I’ll try my best to have something to present, at least.

Regardless… whichever Holiday you’re celebrating this season, I hope that you have the best and brightest possible.The very merriest, to all of you!

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Well, folks, I can’t exactly say I can take full credit for the erm… unique costume idea. It’s inspired by a friend of mine, and, well, let’s just say I’m glad that I’ve always worn a costume to her Halloween party.As they say… write what you know.

Well, folks, in spite of the comic’s current theme, the Winter Holiday Season is in full swing here, and that’s keeping me quite busy. So flipping busy.Put up the tree, been to a party, been to a Christmas wedding, wrapped all the gifts up, sent stuff off, watched Charlie Brown… and yet, I’ve been having a devil of a time getting into it though.Maybe I should just consider it as Hogswatch, or, better yet, Snoggletog season.I think I like that better.

Oh! Also, if you happen to have clear skies tonight, you may wanna pop outside and look at the geminids!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

When I first started working on the partially shifted version of Faith, I tried to figure out what was reasonably believable.Well, believable in the hippy town with a bar full of paranormal creatures and a shop run by an old fart who is secretly a dragon.Besides, Faith might not be the only one taking advantage of the holiday XD

Anyway, I figure, these days, you can get facial prosthetics such as those by Don Post http://origin.kaboodle.com/hi/img/c/0/0/14e/d/AAAADKaIoVAAAAAAAU7c4w.jpg?v=1303654644000and masks that have moving lips: http://images.halloweencostumes.org/werewolf-motion-mask-zoom.jpgthere’s some plausibility that Faith could get away with it, if she was careful.I figured her ears could be explained away with some cables… but as it turns out, even though the script still says puppeted, there’s an even better explanation: Mind-control cat ears.No, really.Look here: http://neurowear.com/(I want some so darn bad!)Heck, folks are even building these things on their own with the ‘mindwave’ type toys: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:13390Of course, I’m sure not everyone would be fooled.Kids are way too smart for that.;3

So… there are two things I want to talk about regarding this page… The first of which is a local store, the year-round Halloween store I mentioned earlier in this chapter. When I was younger, it was kind of like magic… around Halloween, folks could go in, and while I was sizing up the scary decorations outside, deciding if it was safe to pass by them, something else would come out in their place. It’d wear the same shirt or jacket, but seemed to have transformed inside the shop, the head of that person now bearing fangs or horns. Of course, these folks were wearing masks, but when I was a kid, they looked real enough to me. It was like people went in normal, but left as monsters… which really inspired me in this part in the chapter.

The second thing I wish to discuss is Disney’s Gargoyles, an influence I’ve listed before, though in this case, specifically, I’m referring to the episode called Eye of the Beholder, which not only has a werewolf since, but had the first really wolfy werewolf I was allowed to see (My folks weren’t gonna let me watch An American Werewolf in London when I was eight, of course!) but it also included supernatural characters that dress up and are thought to be ‘normal’ during Halloween festivities, a theme found occasionally in modern media, such as in Hocus Pocus, Halloweentown, or even at the end of Witch’s Night Out (Points to you if you’ve seen that) where literally everyone was transformed into monsters at the end, and were cool with it. As a little tip-of-the-hat to that episode of Gargoyles, though, the costumed boy who meets Faith (Can anyone guess who he’s dressed as?) has the same line as someone dressed as a wicked witch in that episode.